Meditation and Eyeballing

This is a sketch called "You eyeballing ME, boy?" and is taken from the April 26th 2009 post to a blog at http://smiftlarsen.wordpress.com. I did a quick search on Google Images for a graphic to accompany the theme of my post and this is what caught my eye (so to speak). The joint authors, Smift and Larsen, are graphic design students in Oslo and there is other interesting material on their blog-site. Have a look at it.

Why the theme of eyeballing? Well, I had a particularly deep and satisfying meditation session one morning, a couple of days ago, just before heading out to do some shopping with my wife Desy who is visiting from Jakarta. As Desy perused the garments on display in one clothing shop, I noticed that a guy was giving us a right good looking over and I blurted out "what are you looking at?" before I could catch myself. Needless to say, Desy was quick to rebuke me and just as suddenly, I averted my eyes and looked at the floor in embarrassment. I hadn't said what I'd said loudly and the guy had no understanding of what I'd actually said although he could have guessed from my tone of voice and body language.

After my outburst, I felt quite annoyed with myself, most of all because I should have been more alert. This sort of thing has happened before after a "successful" meditation session. Normally being eyeballed doesn't bother me and even if it does, I'll simply think "you eyeballing ME, boy?" and not say anything. In this case, the guy's eyeballing was quite overt and directed at both of us, doubtless because I'm a Westerner and Desy is Indonesian, an unusual combination in Shanghai.

So what's going on here? Why am I more apt to blurt something out after a satisfying meditation session that should predispose me to being serene and accepting of life's little vexations? I sort of know the answer but it's useful to attempt an explanation as a way of clarifying my own thoughts on the matter. When I meditate, I find that there are two "areas" to disengage from: one I call The Boiler Room and other I call Headquarters.

The Boiler Room, so-called perhaps because things can get pretty hot down there, is located in "my guts", an area behind the umbilicus, and is associated with how I'm feeling. Any tenseness, sadness, anxiety etc. will be felt here. In the past my identification with this "room" was almost total: I was in the room, I was the room. The trick in meditation is simply to back out of the room if already in it. A sense of "distance" has to be created and I find that locating my awareness in the area of the solar plexus is helpful in achieving this. It's important that the feeling is not pushed away or suppressed. Simple observation of the feeling is enough to trigger this disengagement which is always sudden and very apparent.

Once this disengagement has been achieved it is time to deal with Headquarters, a reference to the restless mind that is more or less located between and behind the eyes. Disengagement from The Boiler Room can throw the mind into a bit of a frenzy because the two work seamlessly together. If I'm having "a poor me" episode in The Boiler Room, the mind will generate an endless stream of thoughts that reinforce this negative feeling.

Once the connection is disrupted, the mind will often flip frantically between past and future, throwing up images of what has been and what might be in an attempt not to be pinned down in the present. Images from the past with strong emotional content will vie with unsettling images of imagined futures. To follow any of these is to be drawn into Headquarters where objectivity is lost and identification with mind is complete.

This will happen repeatedly but each time awareness needs to returned to the solar plexus area. After a while, the oscillations between past and future subside and less weighty thoughts begin to appear, centering around movies I have recently seen or books that I have recently read. This is a good sign and before too long I'll experience a sort of jolt when my mind realises that it's been thought-free for a brief period of time. This is the start of disengagement from the mind whereby thoughts still arise but just as quickly pass away because I'm not longer holding on to them.

There follows a period of internal equilibrium because there has been a more or less successful disengagement from both The Boiler Room and Headquarters. Awareness is centred firmly in the area of the solar plexus and quickly returns there if the attention wanders. An equilibrium also exists between what's inside my body and what's outside of it. Normally there is an inner pressure that wants to burst out into the world or sometimes the world seems to be pressing in. During a successful meditation session however, this imbalance is absent and instead I feel almost transparent. Outside sounds flow right through me. I don't react to them.

Getting back to my outburst, it's clear that during meditation the door to The Boiler Room is open and I can peer in and "feel" what's going on. Headquarters has powered down and only random, intermittent and light-weight thoughts are being generated. What seems to happen after meditation is that I remain closer than normal to The Boiler Room, the door is pretty much still open because I've recently been peering in. An external stimulus triggers an emotional reaction that I'm not quick enough to suppress because I've recently been careful to avoid suppression. Headquarters has also not been subject to any sort of control either, only observation, and so the reaction triggers a thought that finds vocal expression before the normal inhibitory mechanisms can intervene. I think it works something like that.

Of course, the term Boiler Room has business connotations where it's defined as follows (source):

A boiler room is an operation often associated with fraudulent activities, where salespeople cold call high net worth individuals in hopes of getting them to invest in thinly traded stocks. The phone reps have very little information on the securities and focus more on selling the client on the idea of making fast money. The name boiler room originated from the fact it is a high-pressure environment where phone reps are expected to close no matter what.

My own "inner" boiler rooms operates in much the same way. It is a "high-pressure environment" where I'm continually being tricked into investing in "thinly traded stocks" (my feelings) because I've been convinced that is what is best for me. At least that's the way it used to be. I'd be excited about some future possibility and "invest" in that feeling of excitement and anticipation. If the possibility disappeared I'd "invest" in the feeling of disappointment that followed. There was no distance between me and The Boiler Room and I couldn't see the fraudulent activity that was going on. I still get caught up in it but not as much as I used to.

For me, the key to a successful meditation is to sink into my body and become aware of any tension in it. This sensation of sinking into the body is quite palpable and it can be elusive when either Headquarters or The Boiler Room are in turmoil, but without it proper meditation is impossible. Nowadays this happens fairly quickly. I'm sure that my somatic "technique" as a preparation for meditation is quite crude at the moment but I'm deliberately keeping it experiential and not reading anything that will fill my head with "ideas" that my mind can seize upon during meditation.

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Perfect Storm

In my last post, I wrote that "I have come down with a mild but energy-sapping cold" and I was unaware of the complete physical collapse that was about to follow. I've largely recovered now, although my lungs still feel weak. However, the experience was unsettling and in the aftermath I find that I'm thinking more about my physical health and how best to maintain it in terms of sleep, diet and exercise. I've started taking Neurobion, a Vitamin B12 supplement that is available in Jakarta. I need to find the same or similar product here in Shanghai. I'm walking more and have resumed my morning meditation.

As my sickness worsened around Christmas time, Desy asked me if I'd had any shock before leaving China and at first I'd said no. Later it suddenly struck me that I did indeed have a shock of sorts. On the day before I flew out, I'd been half-dozing, face-down, on my bed in the late afternoon when I had an out-of-body experience. I found myself floating a few feet above the bed and became aware that I wasn't breathing. I was OK with this because somewhere in the back of my mind I realised that my astral body didn't need to breathe. However, I began to worry that perhaps I was dead and that my physical body had stopped breathing. This brought my awareness back to my body and the experience ceased.

Desy explained that her Batak culture recognises three bodies: the physical, astral and mental (although different terms are used to describe them). A sudden shock can cause misalignment of the physical and astral bodies with consequent illness, physical and/or mental. I suspect this is what happened to me because as well as being physically ill, I couldn't function mentally either. I was unable to read or use my computer for almost the entire two week period. My out-of-body experienced happened spontaneously and quite unexpectedly. The combination of this experience, the subsequent stress of travel and the disparity in climates may have produced a perfect storm of factors that produced my "super-illness".

Chrono-displaced person

In the novel that I just finished reading (The Time Traveler's Wife), the time traveler has a genetic abnormality that causes him to become abruptly displaced in time to either the past or future. That's the way I feel at the moment, that I've crash-landed in the time immediately before I headed off to Shanghai. Suddenly the four and half months already spent in that city seem like a dream. Tonight I'm sitting in my study just as I always did but the laptop is showing Shanghai time. I reset it for Jakarta and, instead of being 12:30am on Wednesday, it's now Tuesday 22nd December once again. This makes me feel even more like a time traveler.

The change of routine has thrown my meditation into abeyance and I have come down with a mild but energy-sapping cold. Right now I've just taken two Panadol in the hope of alleviating my discomfort and I am reflecting on the nature of time. I particularly liked the poem that Audrey Niffenegger (the author of the aforementioned book) uses at the beginning of the novel:


LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott


I found these lines very interesting and they reminded me of Meher Baba's words "I am closer to you than your own breath". Given my spiritual myopia however, that's simply too close. However, the time will indeed come, either in this life or the afterlife, when I will sit down with the stranger who was myself and feast on my life. Time to resume my meditation.

Old Men on a Bench

Ventured out this morning for a cup of coffee and thought I'd try the newly opened branch of the 85°C cafe/bakery chain. I bought a hot Americano coffee and two pastries. Initially I only intended to buy one pastry but, on second thoughts, I decided on two (one for now and one for later, at home). There is a wide pavement outside the shop and a circular bench on which to sit and watch the passing parade. I sat down next to a little old man who was clearly down on his luck.

I took my pastry out and shortly afterwards handed the other one to him for which he was instantly grateful. He didn't say anything but his face lit up. I think he put it away for later consumption; before long he gathered up some plastic bags he was carrying and stood up, gracing me once again before he left with a nod and a wordless smile. He wandered off, accosting passing strangers for coin money by holding out a plastic cup.

Prior to this I'd been feeling a little sorry for myself, living alone and unloved in Shanghai. The little old man and I were similar, probably, in that respect but I had the comfort of a warm, modern apartment, plenty of food and other advantages. I was grateful that I'd had the opportunity to spontaneously offer him some food rather than just drop a coin in his cup and my reward was that I felt more appreciative of how comparatively well off I really was.

Resurrection

No posts for August, September and October but with the start of November, it's perhaps time to resurrect this blog. Part of the problem has been the Great Firewall of China that prevented me from accessing Blogger directly. I could still have posted via Ponderous but for some reason I chose not to. Yesterday however, I managed to circumvent the Chinese Government's censorship using Hotspot Shield and it also marked the first day that I really accepted the reality of my changed circumstances, namely the fact that I now live in Shanghai and not Jakarta.

In my meditation I practise letting go of the past and future and sinking into the present but I really wasn't incorporating that ideal into my day-to-day life. I was still clinging to my old life in Jakarta and somehow feeling I was here in Shanghai on a holiday. I'm not. However, it's taken me nearly three months to realize that. My recent interest in learning more about the language was a sign I guess that change was imminent. About a fortnight ago, I'd started listening to Chinese language podcasts on my way to and from work and generally becoming more interested in the language.

Connecting with my last post, I can say that my daily practice of meditation has continued. I meditate every morning for about twenty minutes and sometimes I'll meditate later in the day if I'm feeling in any way perturbed. I've become quite practised and sensitive to such "perturbations" and can only marvel how I survived for so long without meditating on a regular basis. However, I'm far from self-satisfied and I'm definitely feeling a need to integrate physical movement and mental orientation. Recently I've become more diligent in my physical exercise but I need to anchor it in something like Tai Chi. Let's see what opportunities arise now that I'm more open to the possibilities of my new home.

A Breakthrough

Photo taken from this site

It's been two weeks since my last post and though nothing much has happened externally, there have been developments internally. During meditation sessions over the past few days, I've managed to sink into what I'll call my "ground state" using an analogy to the ground state of an electron in an atom. In its ground state, the electron is at its lowest energy level. When it becomes excited, it can jump to higher energy levels. In my case, thoughts and emotions represent the higher energy levels where I've spent most of my life. This constant dissipation of energy through almost total identification with my mental and emotional states is exhausting but letting go has been difficult.

During the meditation that I've been following, I've been attempting to disidentify with my thoughts and emotions by becoming a witness to them as they arise. This is a useful technique up to a point but I still found myself being carried off sooner or later by a thought or feeling that I'd latched on to. The reason for this was that I still wasn't grounded and I was witnessing from up in the clouds as it were, buffeted by this and that random thought or emotion. However, the meditation technique also advises to feel your body by exploring the sensations within it. This is what led to my breakthrough.

Previously, I'd tried to feel the sensations within my body but I'd not been very successful. A lot of the time I was thinking about my body, imagining different aspects of it and remaining very much in my thoughts. At last however, I have managed to really feel my body and sink into its energy field. I know I'm there because no thoughts or feelings arise and the sensation of it is quite palpable and readily identifiable. When I lose it, I feel the jump to the higher energy level of feeling or, higher still, of thought. The thing is that I know I've lost it immediately whereas before, during my witnessing, I wouldn't become aware of it nearly so quickly. The thoughts would carry me aware as if hypnotised. Now I'm aware instantly that because of a distracting thought or feeling, I've lost the ground state and that I need to return to it.

The more I practise, the easier it is to sink into the ground state and this is a very still place compared to the turmoil of the emotional and mental realms. It's not totally still because I have the awareness of fine vibrations but it's centred and stable. Previously, when I lived in my head, I felt that "I" existed between my eyes about a inch of so behind my forehead. When I was overcome by emotion, it would arise from my abdomen and rise rapidly upwards so that I would "lose my head". In the ground state, I have the feeling that "I" am resident in the area of the solar plexus, midway between the sources of thought and emotion.

This newly relocated me is definitely "more intelligent" than the old head-centred me that struggled to contain the emotions that would arise from internal and external stimuli. I can see more clearly now the mental and emotional structures that I've built for myself and actively lived in over the years. They were all of my own making and totally false. In my meditation, the ground state is unconditioned awareness where I don't think or feel anything but I'm still intensely aware. That translates in my daily life as being more observant and less judgmental. I can use my brain and engage my feelings as appropriate without being carried away by a thought or a feeling. There is a growing awareness of a mediating intelligence between my gut and my brain.

Villa Altachiara

I'm currently reading Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel "The Enchanted April" in which four women come together to share a one month holiday in a villa in Italy. The 1992 film based on this book was called "Enchanted April" and the location chosen was a place called Villa Altachiara in Portofino, Italy. April in Portofino is indeed enchanting. As the book describes it:

"The wisteria was tumbling over itself in excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended, the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning... every sort of colour piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers."

The above passage is quoted from a recent holiday review article titled Portofino: a port town that has evaded the uglier side of tourism with the clever subtitle of how to holiday with the have-yachts. What's even more special about this villa is that Meher Baba stayed there for a month in July of 1933. The magic of the location combined with Baba's presence made this a very memorable time for his followers who stayed with or visited him. As described in Lord Meher:

"During Baba's stay in Portofino, the cool moonlight lit up the night and the stars shone in all their brilliance. One evening, it was absolutely quiet around the villa, as if a message of peace and joy on earth was being conveyed to humanity. The lovers and mandali gathered around Baba who appeared exceedingly beautiful, wearing a royal blue jacket. The silent atmosphere immobilized them like an intoxicant.

The moon shone on Baba's face, the scent of jasmine hung around them, and the songs of cicadas were heard in the background. "It was one of the most timely, most beautiful moments with Baba," remembered Delia DeLeon. "We just sat there and never said a word." They could see Baba's smiling countenance and flowing hair as if aglow with light."

Well it turns out that Villa Altachiara is for sale. No price is mentioned but with its spacious grounds and 30 spacious rooms, it would not come cheap. There is more information and photographs to be found here.

The Mind's Eye and other Grand Notions

On page 3 of the book "The Enchanted April" that I'm currently reading, there is a reference to both the mind's eye and the bodily eye:

Mrs. Wilkens, having stood some time very drearily, her mind's eye on the Mediterranean in April, and the wisteria, and the enviable opportunities of the rich, while her bodily eye watched the really extremely horrible sooty rain falling steadily on the hurrying umbrella and splashing omnibuses, suddenly wondered ...

I'd never thought much about the first expression before but seeing it juxtaposed with the second got me "thinking" because it's the mind's eye that causes so much trouble in meditation. I'm not currently using any open eye meditations and so when I meditate I close my bodily eyes and then the third eye, that does indeed seem to be in middle of the forehead, takes over and supplies an endless stream of images that prove a formidable distraction.

What I've tried to do most recently in meditating is to unfocus my mind's eye so that I'm aware of the stream of images but I try not to focus on any of them as they pass by. This has not proved too hard to do but ideas still arise as my mind then exercises itself in other, subtler ways. For example, if a meditation session is going well, the idea soon arises that it is going well and my mind then starts to explore that idea. What did I do today that made it go well? How can I repeat that tomorrow? If I shake these ideas off then my ego soon steps in with notions like "yes, you're really getting the hang of this meditation business now, soon you'll be a champion meditator" and so on.

I like to use the term notion to describe the ideas that my ego is continuously generating about itself, other people and the world around itself. A lot of psychic energy is invested in creating and defending these notions.

While watching a cannonball's motion,
Galileo conceived of the notion
That natural laws,
Not a mystical Cause,
Ruled the physical world's locomotion
(source)

A notion can be defined as an odd or fanciful or capricious idea (source) and most of the ego's notions would seem to be of this sort. The notions that I formulate about myself may be at variance with the notions that other people form of me. This can lead to conflicts of course when a notion that I have of myself is challenged by somebody else. I certainly have a notion of myself as being honest and if someone were to suggest that I was dishonest I would take offence. I might form the notion that they were lying or mad or possessed of ulterior motives.

However, as that old rascal Barry Long pointed out "you are only honest at the moment of being conscious of the opportunity of being dishonest". What this implies is that my notion of being honest as a character trait is a total fabrication. I can only be honest (or dishonest) in that moment when I am faced with the possibility of being one or the other. I can't be a constant state of being honest, that's nonsense. If someone accuses me of dishonesty then it is presumably in relation to a specific incident and that can be dealt with. If someone accuses me of being a dishonest person without reference to any specific incidents, then they have clearly formed a notion of me and that's beyond my control. To the extent that I'm free of notions like "I am an honest person" then I'll be saving energy and reducing the risk of conflict with others.

Of course when faced in the future with the choice of being honest or dishonest, hopefully I'll choose to be honest but each situation needs to be considered on its merits. The mother who steals food to feed her starving children is technically being dishonest but most would argue that the situation justifies her being dishonest. In the past, this mother may have been scrupulously honest and prided herself in the notion that she is a scrupulously honest person. If she clings too strongly to that notion, she may decide not to steal the food and her children might die. In this case, the notion she had formed of herself was an impediment to her taking appropriate action in the situation. In less dramatic ways, our notions of ourselves limit and constrain our responses and bring us into conflict with others who hold conflicting notions.

Reflections on Silence Day

Silence Day (see earlier post) is nearly over and it's been an interesting experience. However, I have not succeeded in remaining totally silent, there have been several minor lapses. For example, the dog was scratching at the door of the study and so I said hello to her as I let her in. Later in the day, when I was dozing in a chair, my granddaughter who was playing in my study asked me a question and I instinctively answered it. Maybe next year, I'll succeed fully.

Desy suggested during a totally one-sided conversion at meal time that after I retire from teaching, I should consider maintaining permanent silence like Meher Baba himself. She quite liked my inability to readily complain or criticize or pontificate. Six year old Sabina had no problem with my silence either, she played in the study most of the day and was quite happy to talk away while I was limited to responding with facial gestures. I did use a pen and paper for communication on a couple of occasions. I did not venture out of the house at all figuring the chances of slipping up would be greatly magnified if I were to go to a mall.

In the morning it felt novel to be maintaining silence but as the day has gone on it's not been all that pleasant. I haven't been able to meditate at all and have felt rather restless and unable to read or focus on anything very much. I've ended up watching some television for the first time in quite a while just to pass the time. I have the feeling that I'm just waiting for midnight when I can break my silence and resume a normal life. Overall I feel satisfied that I did the best I could and my lapses were to expected I guess.

Handling Anger

It's all very well to have "big dreams" in which a High Priestess tells you in no uncertain terms to lose your anger but the challenge is to actually do that consistently in a daily life that is filled with vexations. At Pondok Indah mall today I decided on a whim to buy a gelato, something I've never done in all the years that I've been in Indonesia. The advertised price was Rp22000 in big black letters. I ordered a mango gelato and handed over the exact amount of money. However, I was promptly told the price was Rp24500. As I queried the amount, I pointed to the big black letters but the guy trying to take my money pointed to the tiny black letters at the very bottom of the display referring to an additional tax. Well that was too much for me and I walked away off in a silent huff without paying.

Roy, who had been nearby, told me shortly afterwards that a second guy who had already prepared my gelato had then attempted to catch up with me and give me the gelato presumably at the price displayed. However, the escalator was very close by and I was already on my way down it. "A silent huff" is still a mild form of anger and so I'm using this rather trivial incident as an opportunity to reflect on how to better handle such situations in the future. In the past I would have been more vocal and more demonstrably angry at the "injustice" that I was being subjected to. In that sense, I've progressed a little. My best course would have been to simply smile and propose that I was only willing to pay Rp22000 with no possibility of compromise. In the light of what happened, that offer would have been accepted.

I don't think I should have paid the full amount because then I would have remained inwardly angry and that's dangerous. It killed my mother. She was unhappy in her domestic situation and angry about certain things that she should have spoken up about but instead she smiled and maintained a false but happy face. The anger found expression through a virulent form of lung cancer. I don't want to risk that by swallowing my anger but at the same time I don't want to be overtaken by it. The trick is to be quick enough to catch yourself before the anger ignites and that means being alert. The ego is always on guard to defend itself against injustice and, in my case, anger is its favoured weapon. I, as the so-called "intelligent observer", have to intervene and stop the ego from instinctively picking up that weapon, or any weapon, by using more imagination and creativity in dealing with potentially anger-provoking situations.

As Eckhart Tolle says in "The Power of Now":

Remember that the ego needs problems, conflict and "enemies" to strengthen the sense of separateness on which its identity depends. It's only by finding sufficient stillness in myself that I can create enough space (and time) between the stimulus and the anger. In that space, there is time enough for the intelligent observer to deal with the situation. Stillness only arises through meditation.

Silence Day

On July 10th 1925, Meher Baba stopped talking and never spoke again until his death in 1969. He communicated initially using an alphabet board and later by hand gestures that his mandali (devoted followers) would interpret. His justification for his silence was that:

Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion he taught, man has waged wars in his name. Instead of living the humility, purity, and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed, and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form, I observe silence.

"Silence Day" commemorates that day on which Baba took his vow of silence. In all the years since the mid 1990s when I first became aware of this day, I've never managed to remain silent on that day. In most cases, the date has simply slipped by me without my even realizing it until later. Since 2000, the date has fallen shortly after the start of the academic year at the school where I used to teach. It was impossible to maintain silence even if I had remembered.

This year things are different. I'm on holidays while waiting to start at my new school in Shanghai and so there should be no impediments to my observing silence on July 10th. I'll stay at home that day, meditate, read about Baba and avoid any unnecessary social interaction in case I accidentally slip up. During the Vipasanna meditation courses that I attended in the 1990s, I was required to maintain silence for nine days and so one day shouldn't be a problem.

The High Priestess

For the first time in quite some time, I had a dream last night that I'd call a "big dream". I use this term to describe dreams that are numinous or have psychologically significant content. The setting for the dream was the house where I spent my entire childhood and adolescence, apart from the first two years. It's located at 21 Mayneview Street, Milton, Brisbane and it still stands to this day, although now it's been taken over by a computer company. In my dream world, the house serves as a symbol of my psychological foundations and so any dream containing this symbol is invariably significant.

In last night's dream, I had a close encounter with a very powerful and very old female figure. It began with me at the front of the property on which the house stands. I was on the ground writhing slowly and trying to purge myself of some inner emotional content. It felt a bit like throwing up except that I was trying to rid myself of some psychic content rather than stomach content. This seemed to be a necessary preparation for the encounter with the old woman because in the next scene I am the back of the property where she is seated on a raised throne.

I am still prostrate on the ground and I struggle to get to my feet. Eventually I succeed and I draw closer to her at her behest. As I do, her face comes into focus and I can see that she is very, very old. However, she exudes power and authority. Our faces are almost touching and I know that she is going to say something very important to me and she does. With solemn authority, shes tells me to "lose my anger" and thus delivers a very clear and unequivocal message.

Thanks to my sustained meditation, I've had relatively few outbursts of anger recently and they have been relatively minor but even so they are unsettling, often occurring when I'm driving. At other times, I'll become impatient when I'm queueing, even though I may not express my irritation. Lately in my meditation, I've become aware of the need to maintain equilibrium between inner and outer. At brief times, I've even felt the two merging and becoming continuous. At such times, "I" fade out and the inner flows into the outer and vice versa. The antithesis of this state is the emotional state of anger, however mild, because it severely disturbs the equilibrium between inside and outside.

Anger is always ego-driven as when I'm driving and somebody does something that I think he or she shouldn't do. I have an inner expectation of how I think people should behave on the roads and if they don't meet those expectations I'm likely to feel aggrieved. It's stupid really but hard to let go of. However, the old lady on her throne is telling me that I have to. She is reminiscent of the High Priestess in the Tarot deck.

Abdul Gaffoor Mosque

Here is a photo showing the Abdul Gaffoor Mosque as seen from the window of my hotel. This mosque has an interesting history and its own Wikipedia article. Fortunately the architecture is not marred by the presence of loudspeakers mounted on the minarets and the call to prayer seemed to benefit from their absence. The prayer was amplified because I could hear it clearly through the closed hotel window but it was not heavily amplified to the point of distortion. In Indonesia, the focus seems to be on maximising volume with no thought given to the quality of the emerging sound.

The think the Islamic call to prayer should be neither pre-recorded nor amplified and should rely on the natural, unamplified human voice. This was the way it was done before the arrival of loudspeakers. It was the way it was done for the first time by the black slave Bilal:

Bilal stood on top of the Ka’aba in Mecca. It had been a difficult and dangerous thing to do, but he had a far more important task to complete. He filled his lungs with as much air as he could, then used his deep and powerful voice to call faithful Muslims to prayer.

This was an extraordinarily emotional moment for the first Moslems. Some of the history behind this historic event is as follows:

As a free man, Bilal became a close and dear friend to both Abu Bakr and Muhammad. He helped to build the first mosque in Medina. When the time came that the Muslim’s were searching for a way to call the faithful to prayer, Bilal came into his own. The believers decided they did not want a flag, or a bell, or a rattle, or a drum, or a trumpet, but a beautiful human voice.

Abu Bakr became excited. “Then there is only one voice we could use for our first call to prayer,” he said, and explained how he had found Bilal and set him free. And so it was that Bilal became the first muezzin, the first to call people to prayer in Medina. And when the Muslims returned to Mecca, he was the first to call from the top of the Ka’aba. Source

It's a pity that what is largely heard in urban areas of Indonesia nowadays is not "a beautiful human voice" but a highly amplified and intrusive blast of sound that arrives unsynchronised from several different directions corresponding to the location of the various mosques in the vicinity. How much more pleasant it would be to hear a single human voice, natural and unamplified, at prayer time reminding us of the the way it was in the beginning with Bilal standing on the Ka'aba for the very first time.

The Path of Self-Knowledge

I began reading "Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge", a biography by one of his disciples Arthur Osborne. I couldn't help but smile when I encountered Paul Brunton once again and his famous, or infamous, "A Search in Secret India". This is the book that I read in 1967 where I encountered my first reference to Meher Baba and, it now seems, my first reference to Ramana Maharshi because Paul Brunton visited both of them. His report on Ramana was positive while his report on Baba was quite negative. No need to dwell anymore on what that silly writer said however. Osborne's biography is very interesting and the circumstances surrounding Ramana's enlightenment are quite remarkable. More or less spontaneously, at the age of 16, he saw through the illusion of the ego and discovered his true self. As he said to Brunton is his interview:

The sense of ‘I’ pertains to the person, the body and brain. When a man knows his true Self for the first time something else arises from the depths of his being and takes possession of him. That something is behind the mind; it is infinite, divine, eternal. Some people call it the Kingdom of Heaven, others call it the soul and others again Nirvana, and Hindus call it Liberation; you may give it what name you wish. When this happens a man has not really lost himself; rather he has found himself.

Unless and until a man embarks on this quest of the true Self, doubt and uncertainty will follow his footsteps through life. The greatest kings and statesmen try to rule others when in their heart of hearts they know that they cannot rule themselves. Yet the greatest power is at the command of the man who has penetrated to his inmost depth. . . . What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? Men avoid this enquiry into the true Self, but what else is there so worthy to be undertaken?

I have to agree wholeheartedly with this and was encouraged to read that he also said:

If you meditate for an hour or two every day you can then carry on with your duties. If you meditate in the right manner, then the current of mind induced will continue to flow even in the midst of your work. It is as though there were two ways of expressing the same idea; the same line which you take in meditation will be expressed in your activities.

I now realise that without meditation there is little chance of any real change occurring in me. Some catastrophe might shake me awake but failing that I'll just remain fast asleep. Regular meditation creates the possibility of change but doesn't ensure it because it depends on the quality of the meditation. It has to be intelligent meditation in the sense that it can't be simply a routine, repetitive activity. Every session has to be entered into freshly and flexibly with no expectations. Some sessions may be relaxing, others might be deeply unsettling. Some sessions may bring fresh insights and challenges while others may not. Time and location should be varied. Although some times and locations are more conducive to meditation than others, it is important to try to sometimes meditate in difficult environments where noise and distractions abound.

In my meditation session last night, I struggled a little between attention to the outer and inner worlds. There was rumbling to be heard from distant thunder and I found my attention would move to this, then it would shift to some inner content that had arisen. I became aware of the duality but then realised that my mind had created this division between the inner and outer. What arrives from without via the senses or what arises from within should just be accepted and observed without classification. As the observer, I can unite these two seemingly disparate worlds.

Earlier that same day, during another meditation session, I became aware of a sort of inner pulsation and that seemed to grow in intensity until a sense of panic started to arise in me. I thought I might be about to have a stroke or heart attack. Simply focusing my attention of the sense of panic caused it to gradually abate. I have no idea what the seemingly physical pulsations were about but the incident illustrates my point that each meditation sessions may bring unique problems and challenges. I am encouraged to continue and I must continue.

U G Krishnamurti

Andy Dougharty suggested I read a little about U.G.Krishnamurti (not be confused with Jiddu Krishnamurti) and not surprisingly it turned out that there was a strong link between the subject of my previous post (Ramana Maharshi) and U.G.Krishnamurti. In the Wikipedia article about the latter, it says:

In 1939, at age 21, U.G. met with renowned spiritual teacher Ramana Maharshi. U.G. related that he asked Ramana, "This thing called moksha, can you give it to me?" - to which Ramana Maharshi purportedly replied, "I can give it, but can you take it?". This answer completely altered U.G.'s perceptions of the "spiritual path" and its practitioners, and he never again sought the counsel of "those religious people". Later U.G. would say that Maharshi's answer - which he perceived as "arrogant" - put him "back on track".

Many years later however, his final view of things was not all that dissimilar to that of Ramana who advised that the essential question to ask is "who am I?" until the sense of duality disappeared and the "I" dissolved completely. U.G. Krishnamurti says that self-realization is the realization that there is no self to realise. He also talks about the "natural state" of the body in very much the same terms as Barry Long and Eckhart Tolle:

"When the totality of mankind's knowledge and experience loses its stranglehold on the body, the physical organism, then the body is allowed to function in its own harmonious way. Your natural state is a biological, neurological and physical state."

It's clear that Ramana Maharshi, U.G.Krishnamurti, Barry Long, Eckhart Tolle, Osho and Meher Baba are all telling us the same thing in their own unique way. There is no goal and nothing to strive for. Only our thoughts prevent us from realising that. There is no need to do anything but simply stop what we are currently doing wrong by letting go of our attachment to thinking. As U.G.Krishnamurti says "We don't seem to realize that it is thought that is separating us from the totality of things". He goes on to say:

"The only way for anyone who is interested in finding out what this is all about is to watch how this separation is occurring, how you are separating yourself from the things that are happening around you and inside you. Actually there is no difference between the outside and the inside. It is thought that creates the frontiers and tells us that this is the inside and something else is the outside. If you tell yourself that you are happy, miserable, or bored, you have already separated yourself from that particular sensation that is there inside you." "The only way it can maintain its continuity is through the constant demand to know. If you don't know what you are looking at, the 'you' as you know yourself, the 'you' as you experience yourself, is going to come to an end. That is death. That is the only death and there is no other death."

The key is watching "how this separation is occurring". It's no use reading about or intellectualizing about it, it's an experiential thing and it's uniquely individual. No two minds are alike and nobody can get inside your head except you. You have to go in and sort things out. There are techniques that may be helpful but you need to be adaptable and pragmatic, using what works and tossing out whatever doesn't. Needless to say this is a totally subjective activity and I'm at the point now where I know what needs to be done or I should say undone.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Barry Long gives the following advice in his book on Meditation: Go to the great sages - for example Krishnamurti, Meher Baba, Ramana Maharshi, among others." It occurred me that I didn't know anything about the last mentioned person and so I read the Wikipedia article about him. He lived from 1879 to 1950 in Southern India and Meher Baba thought highly of him, referring to him as a saint of the sixth plane. This means that he saw THE ONE everywhere and in everything but he had not yet crossed the great abyss that the separates the sixth plane from the seventh. Having crossed this abyss, there is no longer subject and object, there is only THE ONE.

Ramana attained to his near supreme spiritual state spontaneously in a Hindu temple in Arunachala at the age of 16 and, as with Meher Baba, his mother (Alagammal) became very concerned at his sudden and unexpected spiritual awakening and tried to persuade him to return home and resume a normal life. Ultimately though she ended up attending to him at the temple, as did his younger brother Nagasundaram. He was with his mother at the end of her life and announced on her death that she had been liberated.

Though he did not take a vow of silence as did Meher Baba, Ramana did approve of "the power of silence and the relatively sparse use of speech" and he led a very simple life. His teachings are summarised in the Wikipedia article as follows:

• As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form "Who am I?", is the principal means.
  
  
• Knowledge itself is 'I'. The nature of (this) knowledge is existence-consciousness-bliss.
  
  
• What is called mind is a wondrous power existing in Self. It projects all thoughts. If we set aside all thoughts and see, there will be no such thing as mind remaining separate; therefore, thought itself is the form of the mind. Other than thoughts, there is no such thing as the world.
  
  
• Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.
  
  
• That which rises in this body as 'I' is the mind. If one enquires 'In which place in the body does the thought 'I' rise first?', it will be known to be in the heart [spiritual heart is 'two digits to the right from the centre of the chest']. Even if one incessantly thinks 'I', 'I', it will lead to that place (Self)'
  
  
• The mind will subside only by means of the enquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'Who am I?', destroying all other thoughts, will itself finally be destroyed like the stick used for stirring the funeral pyre.
  
  
• If other thoughts rise, one should, without attempting to complete them, enquire, 'To whom did they arise?', it will be known 'To me'. If one then enquires 'Who am I?', the mind (power of attention) will turn back to its source. By repeatedly practising thus, the power of the mind to abide in its source increases.
  
  
• The place where even the slightest trace of the 'I' does not exist, alone is Self.
  
  
• Self itself is the world; Self itself is 'I'; Self itself is God; all is the Supreme Self (siva swarupam)

Sri Ramana warned against considering self-enquiry as an intellectual exercise. Properly done, it involves fixing the attention firmly and intensely on the feeling of 'I', without thinking. It is perhaps more helpful to see it as 'Self-attention' or 'Self-abiding' (cf. Sri Sadhu Om - The Path of Sri Ramana Part I). The clue to this is in Sri Ramana's own death experience when he was 16. After raising the question 'Who am I?' he "turned his attention very keenly towards himself" (cf. description above). Attention must be fixed on the 'I' until the feeling of duality disappears.

Lucid Dreaming

Hypnos and Thanatos, Sleep and His Half-Brother Death
by John William Waterhouse

I've been on holidays for one week now and that's about how long it takes to really start to slow down and relax. I've managed a daily meditation or two and have begun to re-read Osho's "The Book of Wisdom". In doing so, I was reminded of a reference he made to dreaming. He says:

The ego is a by-product, a by-product of the illusion that whatsoever you are seeing is true. If you think that objects are true, then the ego can exist; it is a by-product. If you think that objects are dreams, the ego disappears. And if you think continuously that all is a dream, then one day, in a dream in the night, you will be surprised: suddenly in the dream you will remember that this is a dream too! And immediately, as the remembrance happens, the dream will disappear. And for the first time you will experience yourself deep asleep, yet awake -- a very paradoxical experience, but of great benefit. Once you have seen your dream disappearing because you have become aware of the dream, your quality of consciousness will have a new flavor to it. The next morning you will wake up with a totally different quality you had never known before. You will wake up for the first time. Now you will know that all those other mornings were false; you were not really awake. The dreams continued -- the only difference was that in the night you were dreaming with eyes closed, in the day you were dreaming with eyes open. But if the dream has disappeared because awareness happened, suddenly you became aware in the dream.... And remember, awareness and dreaming cannot exist together. Here, awareness arises, and there, the dream disappears. When you become awake in your sleep, the next morning is going to be something so important that it is incomparable. Nothing like it has ever happened. Your eyes will be so clear, so transparent, and everything will look so psychedelic, so colorful, so alive. Even rocks will be felt to be breathing, pulsating; even rocks will have a heartbeat. When you are awake, the whole existence changes its quality. We are living in a dream. We are asleep, even when we think we are awake.

Osho is referring here to lucid dreaming about which much has been written and I was prompted to review the literature on the subject on the Internet. One technique recommended for the inducement of lucid dreaming is to carefully count the digits of your hand before going to sleep followed by a reminder to look at your hands in the dream and try counting the digits again. Apparently, this proves very difficult in a dream or you miscount the number. In either case, you are then alerted to the fact that you are dreaming. There are other techniques to maintain the state of lucid dreaming. I have an e-book titled "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. & Howard Rheingold that I think I'll make an effort to read. I notice the final chapter of the book is called "Life is a Dream: Intimations of a Wider World".

I'd like to attempt some lucid dreaming during these holidays and Osho's words have given me the stimulus. The dreaming also connects with Jung, whose writings I've recently reconnected with, and so it should be an interesting experiment. I'll need to start with the digit counting on a regular basis during the day so that it becomes so habitual that the practice will spontaneously occur to me in my dreams as well, maybe. Let's give it a try.

Time Out Of Mind

Now that my practice of meditation has become a daily habit, I find myself a little more in sympathy with religious ritual which at least sets aside some time for supposedly "spiritual" activities not directly related to the routine of daily life. The activities themselves, as practised by the majority of individuals, are often mechanical and motivated by the desire for worldly gain but not always, the potential for some sort of spiritual breakthrough is always there. If no time is set aside, then the phenomenal world is liable to absorb our complete attention and we oscillate forever between past and future, never finding the equilibrium of the present moment. Years can go by like that, even entire lifetimes.

The key is to stay alert during the allocated time and not rely on any set routines. Initially, the mind will struggle against the discipline of setting any regular time aside at all for "mind-training" exercises. After all, like a wild horse, the mind (my mind at least) has had a lifetime of freedom, galloping off in any direction that caught its fancy. With persistence the mind will accept the discipline and the temporary reigning in of its freedom but attempt to compartmentalise and indulge the enforced practice. This is made much easier when external rituals and recitation of set prayers are being followed. The ego, the mind's greatest creation, can then bask in the false belief that it is spiritually oriented. Of course, any serious spiritual orientation has the death of the ego as its sole objection and the ego, despite its manifest limitations, is not stupid. It knows its life is on the line and will fight to the last for its survival.

The death of ignorance begins by setting aside some daily time in which there is the opportunity to drop our absorption in the phenomenal world and quiet the feverish activities of our minds. Without that daily allocation of time, there's no hope at all really but with it, there will be some "time out of mind", however momentary, and then seeds can be sown.

Practical Meditation

It was timely that I happened upon Barry Long's book on meditation (as described in my last entry) and started to apply his suggested approach to daily meditation over the past couple of weeks. This was a time of intense pressure for me as I was the sole person responsible for printing out all of the Secondary School reports by the start of the final week of school. The meditation, undertaken for about 15 minutes prior to going to bed, proved consistently effective in allowing me to remain calm under stress. I also came to realise that I have to do what works for me and not follow any suggested methods or techniques too rigidly. For me, sinking deep into the body and feeling its solidity and density, markedly slows the activity of my mind. Thoughts are so quick and light that I find the contrast between them and the heaviness of my body helps me to catch myself before I'm carried off too far into either the past or the future.

The focus on the body leads to an awareness of its energy and rate of vibration, a rate that is so much slower than thought and even the emotions that arise from thought. This creates a real sense of stability, of being rooted in the present. I'm starting to feel less of a helpless spectator caught up in a crazed thought machine and I'm sensing that I might be able to use the machine when I need it and turn it off when I don't. Of course, I've always applauded the "thought" of being able to do this but it's so very different to actually achieve this, even if only for a few moments in meditation. So I'm very much encouraged to continue my daily practice.

Stillness is the Way

I just happened to spy a book on my bookshelf called "Meditation: A Foundation Course" by Barry Long. I'd quite forgotten that I had it and even though I'm a great admirer of this now deceased guy, I'd never sat down and read it through. It's not a long book and its emphasis is wholely practical, just what I need really because lately I've been reading about various techniques for meditation and not deciding on any one in particular. In practical terms, I've been doing nothing and that's why chancing upon this little gem is so serendipitous.

Barry has a no-nonsense style about him. For example on page 3, he writes: "A great deal of mumbo-jumbo has been written and talked about meditation" and he goes on to say that "some meditation techniques introduce emotional excitation or arousal - through visualisation, chanting, imaginative exercises, trance and so forth - but these will not get you real results, only more confusion."

He divides the book into ten lessons to be followed sequentially over a period of days. Lesson 1 is titled "Posture, Breathing and the Still Mind" and in this Barry briefly outlines the ideas behind the practical lessons that follow, the first of which (Lesson 2) is titled "Meditating on the Body". The approach outlined there is more or less the same as the Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N.Goenka that I'm familiar with from the 90s and so I have no conflicts or reservations in following his directions. I'll practise what he says in the second lesson for a few days and then move on to the next. At last I'll be actually meditating.

In setting up the hyperlinks for this post, I notice that the people behind Barry Long's website are still marketing his videos, audio tapes and books even though he died on December 6th 2003. This is regrettable as their focus should now be on freely disseminating the material via the Internet. To this end they should follow the example of the Meher Baba Trust and digitise all of Barry Long's books and make the ebooks downloadable at no cost. Similarly all his audio and video recordings should be freely downloadable. However, I doubt that will happen.

I also noticed that there is a Vipasanna Meditation Centre at Bogor (near Jakarta) that is offering 10 day courses in May and July but the times aren't convenient for me. In any case, I don't know if I could endure a full ten day session again. I managed a couple when I was in my mid-40s but I don't think I'd have the stamina for it now. The problem with these sessions was that they were so exhausting that I always stopped meditating after leaving the centre just out of sheer relief. I think I'll stick with a little bit of meditation every day if I can manage it. As Barry says: "Stillness is the Way".

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I've just finished reading Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" and it was as absorbing on a second reading as it was thirty or so years ago. In this book, he writes that "it is really the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities, such as membership in organizations, support of 'isms' and so on, interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible ...". His words are not to be thought of as trumpeting the ego because it is fundamental to Jung's view of the psyche that the ego is only a small part of a much larger and far more ancient whole. This wholeness can only be grasped however, after the individual has disidentified with organization and 'isms'.

Reading the book reminded me of Jung's lifetime study of the psyche and how modern education largely lacks any psychological content. Most students undertake subjects like Mathematics, Science, Business Studies, Economics, Geography etc. and even though Psychology can be studied in some syllabi I would imagine that there is little emphasis placed on introspection. The courses studied offer students no opportunity for self-reflection, no encouragement to examine their inner life. If a school provides instruction in the religion that parents have foisted on the student, there are usually no incentives given to examine or question the belief system that underlies the religion. Any self-examination needs to take place outside of the education system.

The entire education process leads the student away from their inner life and toward involvement in the outer world. There's nothing wrong with that except that the process is overwhelmingly orientated toward the outer world at the almost complete neglect of the inner. Any attempt to redress this imbalance is likely to perceived by parents who follow a particular religion as embracing the devil or undermining the faith of the students. Heaven forbid that, in the classroom, a discussion might take place about dreams or that students be encouraged to keep a dream diary.

After leaving school, students' absorption in the outer world is so one-sided that the psyche compensates. The inner world asserts itself, often suddenly and powerfully, and the adolescent is drawn to cults, religious extremism, drugs or suffers a mental breakdown. My closest friend at school began to display symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in his last year of high school and suffered a complete mental collapse in his early twenties. He came from a quite religious family but the empty rituals that characterized this religion did nothing to satisfy the demands of his inner life for meaning and a sense of wholeness. He became a passionate reader of Nietzche, recognizing in the philosopher a kindred spirit but, like him, eventually succumbed to ego-inflation and insanity. My friend firmly believed that he had started World War III.

I am NOT THAT

I'm still making my way through Osho's "Book of Wisdom" and what he says about meditation is relevant to my last post about keeping physically fit. He describes meditation as anything that brings body, mind and spirit into harmony. To that end, jogging could be a form of meditation. So could swimming. He says it is important to choose a form of meditation that suits you. Sitting quietly observing the rhythm of your breathing may suit some but not others. You have to find techniques that work for you. He says that whenever a person is creative, absorbed in creativity, he or she is meditating.

As Brian Eno says, "If you study the heuristics and logistics of the mystics, you will find that their minds rarely move in a line". He goes on to say, "So it's

much more realistic to abandon such statistics and resign to be trapped like a leaf on the vine". It's easy to be trapped of course. We are trapped by identification. According to Osho (so this may be apocryphal), George Gurdieff said, "If I could summarise my teachings into one word, it would be 'disidentification'". I like that. Don't get trapped. Don't identify.

You can start by not accepting labels. I used to proclaim, with my ego nodding agreeably, that "I am a vegetarian". Oops, label. Of course once you allow yourself to be categorised, there are sub-categories to consider. People would ask "Do you eat eggs?" I would smilingly say "I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian, which means I eat eggs (non-fertilised of course) and milk products". Inevitably someone asks, "Do you eat fish?" and I would be compelled to say, somewhat sternly, that I don't eat fish because if I did then I wouldn't qualify as a vegetarian. Categorisation feeds the ego. It's far simpler to say that I don't eat meat. If someone asks whether I eat fish, I can calmly say that I don't. It throws the onus back on the questioner to decide on a categorisation for my eating habits if he or she feels that it's needed.

The same goes for nationality. If someone were to ask me now, "Are you an Australian?", I'd have to say that I have an Australian passport. If the person then wants to classify me as an Australian then that's their decision. It's easy to get cute about this and use this "via negativa" as an ego trip but it's also important to free oneself of categories and this is a step in the right direction. If I say I am a vegetarian, then that implies there are non-vegetarians and immediately a divide is created. If I say on the other hand that I don't eat meat, it's rather different. It's more like saying I don't eat chocolate (not quite the same, but similar).

It's very common to describe oneself in terms of one's profession. I might say "I'm a teacher" but what I really mean is that "I'm qualified to work as a teacher in a Secondary school". It's not quite the same thing. I guess it come down to trying to remember that "I am NOT THAT". You can only find yourself by forgetting what you're not and reinforcing your false sense of identity through "I am THIS" is sensibly to be avoided.

Exercise Time

When I went to England is late March, I dropped my normal exercise routine and since returning to Jakarta I didn't pick it up again. I decided tonight

that it was time to start again because physically I've been feeling stiff and uncoordinated. I had a tape measure so I decided to take some measurements in order to monitor my progress. My waist measurement came in at a disturbing 98cm with 94cm being regarded as acceptable for Western males. My biceps measured 30cm when tensed. Expanded chest was 101cm and unexpanded 101cm. Triceps measured 53cm at groin level. I'll take the same measurements in a month or so and see what sort of progress I've made. I was reminded that while meditation is important, the body needs to be attended to as well.

Active Meditation

There's nothing like a busy end of the school term and a week's long holiday to disrupt the regularity of blog posting but I'm determined to resume. I've done precious little meditation recently but I did follow an interesting tweet today from SambodhiPrem on Twitter that said "How I Entered the World of Meditation, Even Though I Couldn’t Sit Still! by Shanti World of Meditation, Seattle http://tinyurl.com/d8u66v".

The hyperlink led to Shanti's page on the "The World of Meditation Center" and the graphic above was taken from the Meditations link on the opening page and shows links to various types of meditation, most of which I weren't aware of. Some of them are called "active meditations" that Osho recommended for busy Western minds that found sitting in silence for long periods to be very difficult. Shanti first met Osho on Christmas Day of 1973 in Bombay and the story is an interesting one. So I'm currently reading about these different forms of meditation and may end up applying some of them in my meditation practice.

Let It Go

You certainly need to see the funny side of this "search for inner calm". Last night I was composing an email to my daughter and I was trying to express in words what I felt was the essence of the spiritual advice that accepted masters were trying to pass on to a benighted humanity. I suddenly came up with the phrase let it go.

This can be interpreted in two main ways; firstly in the sense of not following through on a reaction to something that is upsetting or hurtful. For example, if somebody insults me, I can react and insult them back or choose instead to let it go. In another sense it can mean not holding on to things. This is a practically impossible task because I can hold on to quite subtle things like my beliefs, my value systems, my memories, my plans for the future etc. This doesn't mean that I shouldn't have such things, only that I shouldn't hold on to them.

Once I hold on to something such as a belief, I am wanting it to remain the same. When I do this my belief becomes less flexible and I'm less open to facts that might challenge that belief. I become less tolerant of alternative beliefs. Worse still I come to identify with this and other beliefs and build up a belief system. This system become part of how I define myself and of who I think I am. But of course I'm not this or that or anything else. By holding on and not letting go, the likelihood of identification with what is held on to increases. For example, the more I hold on to the past, the more I am shaped by it.

The hapless chicken in the above cartoon has held on to a need to devote its life to the search for inner calm. Of course the more intense the devotion, the more elusive that inner calm becomes. The chicken's goal-oriented mindset ensures failure and consequent anger at the failure to achieve a life-long goal. By letting go of the goal, and everything else, inner calm arises. It was always there but by grasping at this and that I created turbulence and disturbed that calm. Let it go.

Sanskaras

"Sanskaras" is the plural form of the Sanskrit word "sanskara" that is translated usually as "impression" or "imprint". However, I'm reluctant to use the word "sanskaras" when speaking with people who are unfamiliar with the term but using the terms "imprints" or "impressions" is equally unsatisfactory because these words by themselves don't convey what I'm trying to communicate. Interestingly and not surprisingly, the Wikipedia article on the term makes mention of Meher Baba in the following context:

According to Meher Baba, in the course of evolution sanskaras play a vital role in that they aid in the formation of conscious experience, and thus eventually bring about self-awareness in the human form, but then serve no further purpose. According to Baba they are actually a hindrance once full consciousness is achieved in the human form because they slant our experience of things as they are. The goal for the human being then is to be rid of them by "unwinding" them or through "shakings" caused by progressive variously opposite life experiences over many human lives in reincarnation, thereby eventually unveiling and revealing the true nature of reality and the true identity of the self. According to Meher Baba the ridding of sanskaras can be quickened by the help or guidance of a perfected master or satguru.

The article likens the effect to Sanskaras to that of "a lens through which the subjective aspects of our experience arise. Thus when we perceive (either thoughts or external objects) we apperceive those objects through the lens of past experience. We perceive through the imprint or conditioning of past impressions or sanskaras." Apperception is explained as:

The process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole" (Ledger Wood in Runes). In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience.

Example 1: We see a fire (visual perception). By apperception we correlate the appearance of fire with past experiences of being burned. Having combined present and past experience we realize this is a situation in which we should avoid placing our hand in the fire and being burned.

Example 2: A rich child and a poor child walking together come across the same ten dollar bill on the sidewalk. The rich child says it is not very much money and the poor child says it is a lot of money. The difference lies in how they apperceive the same event - the lens of past experience through which they see and value (or devalue) the money.

I was sitting in the garden this morning pondering such matters. Nearby somebody was revving a motorcycle and I was observing the impression that the sound was having on me. As always the impression was negative and I thought about some related words. One of them was oppression because from my perspective I was being oppressed, in the tranquillity of my garden, by the sound of the motorcycle. I struggled to suppress negative thoughts such as wishing the offender ill-fortune when he finally mounted his steed and roared away. It would seem that impressions may be the source of oppressions, suppressions, repressions and depressions so it is important to properly understand their mechanism.

The sound of the motorcycle was not loud enough to cause discomfort, only annoyance, and I was certainly apperceiving by taking the perception of the sound and relating it to my mainly negative experiences with motorcycle riders on the streets of Jakarta. Somebody else, hearing the same sound, might be reminded by happy bike riding days, wishing to be in the saddle once again and heading off on the open road. So I sat there and got slightly annoyed but at least I was reflecting on my annoyance. Reflecting on ones reactions is the best that can be done initially by becoming a witness as well as a participant in what is happening subjectively. If lost completely in subjectivity, there is no chance to perceive rather than apperceive. All spiritual masters are unanimous on the importance of this witnessing.